The origin of my name

In my long-term promotion of alien Artificial Field Scanning technology, many Chinese traditional culture enthusiasts and I Ching[1] lovers were very interested in me.

Some people asked me to report my birth date and eight characters, they wanted to tell my fortune. Some people also wanted to tell my fortune by my appearance.

Someone asked why my name is Zhang Xiangqian.

The most frequently asked question is: Zhang Xiangqian, when will you succeed?

When my brother was not yet born, my maternal uncle came and told my father that if it were a boy, he would be called Zhang Xianglong[2], and if he would have a younger brother in the future, he would be called Zhang Xianghu[3]. Xiang is our seniority in the clan (beifen)[4].

The order of beifen indicated on our Zhang family's genealogy is:

Da, Xue, Zhi, Dao, Xian, Hou, Xiang, Ming[5].

My grandfather's beifen was Xian, my father's was Hou, and when it comes to me and my brother, we must be the Xiang generation.

Now in my son's generation, no one treats beifen as a matter of time, and their names are not called strictly according to the genealogy.

My maternal uncle used to be the captain of the Eighth Route Army[6]. He was too upright and offended someone. During the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the subsequent turmoil, he was tricked, encountered assassination and injured. He died soon from illness and hunger.

When my brother was born, someone said that the name given by my maternal uncle didn't sound good.

Our neighbor was a barber, and his father came from a private school (sishu[7]). He believes that in the future, the country needs educated people, and only they can stabilize the country. So, when my brother was born, he suggested that the name be Zhang Xiang'an[8]. My father accepted this suggestion. So, my brother's name is Zhang Xiang'an now.

After I was born, according to the advice of the person who graduated from the private school, I should be called Zhang Xiangbang. If there is another younger brother named Zhang Xiangding, then there is another younger brother named Zhang Xiangguo[9].

Not long after I was born, my mother hugged me and basked in the sun at the door, and many villagers around me were also sunbathing. While everyone was asking what my name was, a strange old man came and told my fortune by looking at my face. When he saw me, he was shocked and said, "This child has grown up to be very wealthy."

People around him asked, "How wealthy?" 

"This man can earn all the money in the world, and in the future, everyone won't have to earn money or work anymore. They can all live a good life. I think this child will have half of the money in the world."

Everyone around laughed and none believed his words.

This physiognomy asked my mother if she had given me a name and what my name was.

My mother told him that my name was Zhang Xiangbang.

The physiognomy quickly said that it was inappropriate and suggested changing my name to Zhang Xiangqian (张祥钱)[10].

Later on, the old man was extremely accurate when he told fortune of several people around him. It was only then that we felt that he was very magical. Later, my family named me Zhang Xiangqian (张祥钱).

When I was in primary school, I was in first grade. Our Chinese teacher was Yang Xiaomei. She was a knowledgeable young woman down here from Shanghai[11], who was very beautiful and dressed very cleanly.

She probably thought my name was very rustic, so she changed my name to Zhang Xiangqian (张祥前)[12] without my consent. It's also possible that when I reported my name, she just wrote my name based on the pronunciation. At that time, people were not as serious as now.

At that time, because my family was too poor, I often wore tattered clothes that didn't cover my body. My classmates even bullied me, deliberately pulling on my torn clothes, making me even more embarrassed.

Ms. Yang scolded those students and protected me. I was very grateful for this. My family told me that Ms. Yang wrote my name wrong and asked me to tell her and change it. But when I saw her, I was always shy and hesitant to speak up.

I have always thought, if Ms. Yang hadn't changed my name back then, my name would have been Zhang Xiangqian (张祥钱). Would I really be one of the world's richest people now?

I think it's actually possible. The Artificial Field Scanning technology I bring can replace electricity on Earth. In 2021, China's electricity consumption exceeded 4 trillion kilowatt-hours[13], while global electricity consumption reached one hundred billion[14].

Artificial field scanning technology can also produce drastic changes in various fields such as energy, transportation, tourism, construction, medical care, biology, industrial manufacturing, electric transportation, information processing, education, nuclear physics, aerospace, and interstellar flight.

I was born in the year of Sheep, August 26, 1967, probably in the morning. My parents are both dead now, so I never thought of asking about this before.

Every time when August 26th of the lunar calendar comes, people forget my birthday. I have no status in the family, and my wife often scolds me in front of the children like scolding a dog. Therefore, my family never cared about my birthday and no one mentioned it.

My relatives think of me mostly because I own an electric tricycle and maybe they need to move something. Normally, my presence is like air.

As for when I will succeed and when Artificial Field Scanning will gain the attention of society, some experts predict that I will succeed in 2025.

Why do I believe this expert? Because all his predictions have been verified, and he was not the only one who predicted that I would succeed in 2025.

Some people may wonder, why you, Zhang Xiangqian, are interested in superstitious things such as physiognomy, fortune telling, and prophecy when studying Unified Field Theory and promoting Artificial Field Scanning, all of which are scientific.

The desire to gain social attention is related to people's persistent promotion of Artificial Field technology, as well as luck.

There are two reasons here. One is:

No matter how good science and technology are, they need to be valued by society and developed and applied, before they can generate value. Without attention, no one can develop them, which is equivalent to nothing, no effect. There is no intermediate state.

Getting social attention is related to people's persistent promotion of Artificial Field technology, as well as luck.

Although I believe in physiognomy, fortune-telling, and prophecy, I believe that the future contains infinite possibilities. physiognomy and prophecy are not things that must happen in the future, but rather have a relatively high probability of occurrence. It's not that absolute or 100% certain things must happen.

By 2025, Artificial Field Scanning will receive social attention, with a possibility of perhaps 80%. My current efforts, not daring to slack off at all, are aimed at eliminating the 20% possibility.

Of course, it's possible that my luck is not good, and everyone's luck is not good. It's also possible that the 20% won't be eliminated.

Another reason is that I believe prophecy may have some scientific basis, not entirely superstition.

I pointed out in my work Space Information Field Theory that any space in the universe can contain all the information of the entire universe in the past, now, and in the future.

Time is just a feeling of human beings that the space around us, the observers, diverges and moves at the speed of light. If it weren't for us, time would not exist, nor would sequence exist. If we, human observers, do not exist, time does not exist, and order also does not exist. The information about everything that happened billions of years ago and billions of years later would overlap at a single point in space.

Perhaps prophets make accurate predictions by capturing hidden information in space, especially future information. I believe it's the scientific basis for prophetic predictions.

We live in an infinite universe, which contains endless possibilities, and everything is possible in the future.

My attitude is: I would rather have done it than missed it.

Translator's Notes:

[1] I Ching is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. It was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC).

[2] Long means dragon.

[3] Hu means tiger.

[4] Beifen (辈分): It is a form of Chinese naming. It is mostly used as one of the characters in the name (mostly the first character), and is generally used in genealogy registration. It can distinguish a person's seniority in the family or clan.

[5] The original text is: "大,学,之,道,先,后,祥,明".

[6] Eighth Route Army: a group army under the command of the Chinese Communist Party, nominally within the structure of the Chinese military headed by the Chinese Nationalist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

[7] Sishu (私塾): A private teaching place in ancient China that taught children to learn Confucian cultural classics. There is no fixed textbook or study period, usually only one teacher. Existed until the 1950s.

[8] An means stabilizing.

[9] The last word of the four names combined is "An Bang Ding Guo (bring peace and stability to the country)".

[10] The last word of the name (Qian) means money. The pronunciation of it and the name given by Ms. Yang are the same.

[11] Down to the Countryside Movement: a policy instituted in China between mid-1950s and 1978. As a result of what he perceived to be pro-bourgeois thinking prevalent during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong declared certain privileged urban youth would be sent to mountainous areas or farming villages to learn from the workers and farmers there. In total, approximately 17 million youth were sent to rural areas as a result of the movement. The original text means that Ms. Yang was sent here from Shanghai.

[12] The last word of the name (Qian) means forward.

[13] The data in the original is incorrect. It was 8.3 trillion kilowatt-hours.

[14] The data in the original is incorrect. It was 25,343 terawatt-hours.